Contacto de dialectos y lenguas en el Nuevo Mundo: La vernacularización del español en América

Abstract

From California to South America, the Spanish loanwords into Amerindian languages (or hispanismos) show that the various peninsular dialects coexisted in the New World along with the Spanish koine´, which spread in the diAerent regions in only a few decades. In addition, the New World Spanish (NWS) koineadopted lexical items from Amerindian languages. Special attention is given to language and dialect contact issues such as levelling, koineization, vernacularization, and borrowing as processes that intervened in the configuration of NWS. Some generalizations are drawn with respect to lexical changes, which spread faster than phonological changes; when the latter are regular, they are as easily adopted as rules. This explains the swift adoption of seseo as the preferred form of pronunciation. The NWS koine´ , however, is not necessarily identical to southern varieties of peninsular Spanish because it immediately borrowed lexical items from three of the most widely spoken Amerindian languages: Taino, Nahuatl, and Quechua. At the same time, many of the Amerindian languages borrowed lexical items from Spanish that reflect the pronuncia- tion of diAerent dialects: castellano-viejo, andaluz, and espanol americano nivelado or the NWS koine´ . The NWS koinewas disseminated in the highland areas of the continent by males of diAerent ethnic backgrounds who participated in the creation of rural institutions such as ranchos and haciendas (or rancherada). La conquista y la poblacion de Espana en America produjeron una situacion privilegiada desde el punto de vista lingu¨ istico, ya que estos eventos permiten observar y hacer planteamientos teoricos sobre la genesis y los procesos de formacion de koines, dialectos y comunidades lingu¨ isticas en general, y sobre el cambio lingu¨ istico, en particular. En efecto, gracias al aumento de estudios sobre el contacto lingu¨ istico,